The Capital City Go-Go

Between the first and second quarters of last night's win over the Detroit Pistons, the Washington Wizards made an important announcement, revealing the name and logo of their minor league or G League affiliate which will begin play in the fall of 2018. The name? The (drumroll please...) Capital City Go-Go!!! The logo? Well, that's the picture at the top of this post.

How good are the name and logo? I'll get to my thoughts on that in just a minute. Let's talk about some more practical considerations before we get to the fan stuff.

From a basketball standpoint, yesterday's announcement is a next step forward in what is an important process and one which frankly the Wizards have been trailing most of the rest of the NBA on for a significant period of time. For sure, rolling out a name and a logo doesn't make a minor league franchise any more real but this process has steps and this is one of them. It now allows fans to believe that we are on schedule with having a support franchise of our very own.

Why is this so important? Well, in addition to bringing pro basketball to more people in this country at a more affordable price point, having a dedicated farm team allows concentrated player development and rehabilitation assignments. This year, 26 of the 30 NBA teams have G League franchises that are singly affiliated, meaning either that the two franchises are owned by the same organization or that the operations of the minor league team are run by the parent franchise. That means that the coaching system is identical between the two teams, allowing faster development of young talent or rehabilitation assignments for players coming off injuries in a basketball playbook environment exactly the same as they will find when they get to or back to the NBA.

The Wizards ain't one of those 26 teams with a dedicated G League affiliate. That means the League has way less value for the Wizards than about 26 other teams. In fact, this year the Wizards have used the G League only because they pretty much have to. Devin Robinson and Mike Young were signed to two-way contracts which allow them to play in both leagues under specific guidelines and salary structures. So far, the Wizards have confined both to the G League and left it at that. The only way they could have had less involvement so far is if they just opted to not sign any two-way contracts at all.

So how are Robinson and Young developing? Right now, no clue. Devin is playing the Philadelphia 76ers way on assignment to their Delaware G League franchise. Mike is learning how the Phoenix Suns do things down in Arizona. Earlier this week they actually played each other in a game. Assuming the G League franchise is actually interested in developing another team's players, does this setup sound ideal in any way? Not to me it doesn't.

So how else might not having a G League franchise hurt a team? Well, earlier this week, the Chicago Bulls announced they would be sending Nicola Mirotic and Zach LaVine to their nearby G League team for a rehab assignment. They are not the only team to have done this in the past. There's no way the Wizards are going to send some of their NBA players to another team's minor league affiliate so they just simply don't have that luxury available to them. The Wizards are a step behind here.

Capital City Go-Go shirts were mandatory shirt wear during second half warmups last night. 

So about that name and logo.

Really? The Capital City Go-Go???

OK, first, let me say I appreciate the effort to do something different. Of the 26 teams currently in the G League, 11 of them have nicknames that match their parent franchise (I'm counting the Iowa Wolves in this number) which is both unimaginative and sad. The best names in the G League are the ones that existed before single affiliation was a concept. The Maine Red Claws, Rio Grande Valley Vipers, Fort Wayne Mad Ants and Reno Bighorns are all awesome names. The Capital City Go-Go certainly matches the spirit of these names, just like the Memphis Hustle did when that franchise began playing this year.

I also appreciate the effort to create a name that's place specific instead of generic. Warriors can come from anywhere, as can Wolves, Raptors and Stars. There's no place else that Go-Go (named after D.C.'s own go-go style of music) can come from.

So what's my problem, you might ask? Well, there are a few issues. First, I object to the Capital City moniker. I am going to think of The Simpsons every time I read or hear that. In case you are not a Simpsons fanatic, in one episode Homer self-appointed himself the mascot of the local minor league baseball team the Springfield Isotopes and was so successful that he got sent to Capital City to pinch-mascot for the world-famous Capital City Goofball. Of course, he failed. I like Capital. Just not Capital City. I've had Tony Bennett in my head all day singing the Capital City song from The Simpsons. Hate that!

Second of all, it's not really very sports-y. It used to be mascots were concrete things like Orioles or Cowboys or Jets or Hawks or something like that. I get that some teams have appropriated more abstract concepts like weather (Heat or Lightning) but now we are dealing with sounds? I guess the Jazz is the same way. And how is the name going to roll off the tongue when the team's on the court? Are we going to chant "Let's go Go-Go!"???

Finally, and the biggest reason really, is that nobody outside of D.C. is going to get it. On one level, I love that. It's like an inside joke that everyone is in on except people not from the District. On the other hand, nobody really cares about the G League nationally and it's going to be ultra-confusing to explain to other people what my Capital City Go-Go shirt means. It's just going to bring up endless questions. 

Some nicknames have hidden meanings: I love how the Charlotte Hornets name references a quote from Lord Cornwallis during the Revolutionary War. But the great thing about the hornets name is it works whether or not you understand the hidden meaning. The Memphis Hustle is another name with multiple levels of meaning. The Go-Go name is just confusing and there's no hidden meaning although until it's explained, nobody's going to get it on any level.

And then there are the logos. We got three last night. The (what I assume will be) primary logo at the top of this post, a partial version of that same logo with just the bongo drum with basketball patterned drum head and then the alternate logo which features a note with three stars over a silhouette of the District of Columbia.

I think the primary logo is fine. I'm not crazy about the "Capital City" font but other than that I am pretty ambivalent about the whole design. My biggest objection is the name itself. Because the name makes up most of this logo, I can't imagine I'm ever going to be purchasing any apparel with this logo on it.

I actually like the secondary logo a lot. I don't like the red background but if the team sells shirts with this logo on it that are not red, I could see myself owning one or two of these things. It represents the District way more than the name itself. I'm surprised, and actually refreshingly so, that the team didn't make basketballs out of the circles on the note. Basketball logo designers have a way of turning every circle on a design into a basketball. Not doing that here was a good move.

I'm not sure I have the answer to what I wanted here. I wrote a post last year on this blog where I wondered what the name of the team would be. My answer was Capital Bullets, although I really liked my Ward 8 Wizards suggestion better over time. My answer was non-creative. The Capital City Go-Go is way more creative. But I just don't like it. Maybe I'll warm to it over time. I expected today that I'd be hunting around on the internet to see where I could find a t-shirt with the new team's logo on it. I haven't done that and I don't think I'm going to do it any time soon. I'm disappointed here. I get it. But I don't get it. Oh well.

G-League Logo Rank, Part 3

Over the past two weeks, I've posted 16/26ths of my G-League logo rank (or 8/13ths if you prefer to reduce fractions). Now it's time for the grand finale, the exalted top 10 of the NBA's minor league. Read on. There are some good looking logos on this list.

10. Northern Arizona Suns

The Phoenix Suns began play in the NBA way back in 1968. When they did, they rolled out a secondary logo that to me is still one of the best logos ever used by an NBA franchise. Yes, it was extremely simple, just a cartoon-like sun blazing away that would look at home in a Hanna-Barbera cartoon of that era. The Suns kept that logo, which also featured the word "Suns" across the center, until 1992. A piece of classic NBA logo history died for me the day they retired it.

The simplicity of that original logo has been recreated in large part in the Northern Arizona Suns' branding. It's the resurrection of that long dead motif that lands the Suns' G-League offering at number 10 on this countdown. Admittedly, there are issues with the re-use that are lost in translation. I'm OK with the basketball at the center of the logo (so it's really a basketball shining like the sun I guess) and I don't mind the compass point pointing north at the top of the sun. But I'm not such a fan of the wordmark below the logo and I hate the NAZ abbreviation. Nonetheless, I still like this one. It's simple enough to capture something that I really like.

9. Agua Caliente Clippers

For the first time maybe since the Fort Wayne Zollner Pistons (named after the Zollner piston manufacturing company) dropped the Zollner in 1948, corporate sponsorship returns to an NBA-affiliated team in the form of the Agua Caliente casino sponsored Los Angeles Clippers G-League team. The name's not really the point of this post I guess.

The parent Clippers team in my humble opinion have the absolute worst branding in the NBA, a videogame logo inspired mess of way too simple Ls, As and Cs put together in awkward combinations. I have to say they did way way better with their G-League branding. There's nothing too complicated going on here which is refreshing. They are still using the same boxy C as they are at the NBA level, but the abstract basketball with the color swirls (or whatever else you want to call those things) and the circular text ring at the perimeter for me come together in a coherent and pleasing logo. Thumbs up! Good job!

8. Canton Charge

I despise putting anything associated with the Cleveland Cavaliers this high in any ranking I'm responsible for but let's face it, when compared to the competition logo-wise in the G-League, the Canton Charge deserve a top 10 spot.

The Charge's primary logo features a cavalier (I'm assuming) thrusting a decidedly non-elegant sword towards the viewer. Other than the blade looking way clumsier that I would imagine a swashbuckler wielding, the logo is well designed and uses color as shadow to make it simple but not simplistic. There's movement and force in this design.

I'm not thrilled with the secondary logo, which looks like a chunkier, squarer version of the Cavs' cocktail onion on a sword toothpick logo but the primary logo is good enough to carry the day here.

7. Delaware 87ers

Yes, the 87ers logo is pretty much an exact copy of the Philadelphia 76ers 2009 logo recreate featuring the classic 1977 Sixers logo with "87" placed where "76" was on the original logo. On the one hand, there's nothing wrong with this; this logo is one of the most beloved (by me) NBA logos of all time.

On the other hand, they got one thing very wrong. In the original logo, the top of the "7" is curved, which creates a perfect negative for the circle of the 13 stars from the first Stars and Stripes flag to sit. In the 87ers logo, the same curve is applied to the "7" but the circle of stars sits awkwardly above the top of the "8" and not nested in the dip like on the original logo. Who knows, maybe they tried moving it over and it looked out of place in the middle of the logo. I still say they should have done it. Good, not great, here.

6. Raptors 905

I didn't particularly know what it was quite about the Raptors 905 logo that appealed to me until I wrote this piece. Let's face it, I couldn't state "yep I like this for no particular reason" and put them in the 6 spot. It's the details for me. I love the simple symmetry of the logo, right down to an attempt to make "9" and "5" mirror images of one another (they are decidedly not in real life). I also LOVE (yes, LOVE) the raptor claw marks on the top of the ball where the seams are on the bottom. As much as I hate the Raptors' name, I am almost giddy about this design.

The secondary logo for me is OK. It's (I guess) a map of Ontario (didn't really know the shape of Ontario) with a plan white "M" for Mississauga, the town where the team plays. This looks either like a saddle with an M on it or an old college blanket of a school beginning with M draped over the back of a couch. Or both. I know, I said I love map-themed logos. I don't love this one. It's good at best. It's the primary logo that lands Raptors 905 in sixth.

5. Fort Wayne Mad Ants

Yes, it's already obvious I have a soft spot for teams that pre-date the NBA's true takeover of the G-League, especially when they have kept their names and logos intact. The Mad Ants are the first of three consecutive in that camp, although the Ants have surrendered their red and yellow color scheme for a more Indiana Pacers-themed blue and yellow package.

The Mad Ants' (named after General "Mad" Anthony Wayne who was also whom Fort Wayne was named after) logo is fairly simple: an ant head in a circle with a triangle beneath, if that makes sense from the picture above. It's the words more than anything else that get me liking this one. I love this font. It reinforces the name more than the voracious ant with mandibles ready to chomp into anyone who opposes him.

4. Reno Bighorns

The Mad Ants predate the Pacers' takeover. Out west in Reno, the Bighorns are the last of the original west coast franchises. The Idaho Stampede are gone; the Bakersfield Jam are gone; but the Bighorns remain in Reno. And just like the Mad Ants, the Bighorns have allowed the now-parent Sacramento Kings to change their green and gold colors for the Kings' purple and silver.

If I've got a soft spot in my heart for the classic NBDL (and before) franchises, I've also got a huge spot there for bighorn sheep. I've looked for these things in the Black Hills of South Dakota; Yellowstone National Park; the stretch of Nevada between Las Vegas and the Hoover Dam; and Zion National Park in Utah (saw one far far away) before finally laying eyes on a whole herd in Carlsbad Caverns National Park in New Mexico. The image presented by the Bighorns' logo is simple and strong and shows one of these gorgeous animals in a classic pose seen from below. I'm in full support of this logo. I even like the insertion of the Kings' crown from their logo into the wordmark.

Now about that secondary logo...I'm just ignoring this thing. I don't like it at all. It's not as bad as the Legends' "TL" or the Drive's "GR" but it's not adding anything. The good outweighs the bad here by a long shot.

3. Maine Red Claws

I'm just going to throw this out there: the top three logos in the G-League are better than the top three logos in the NBA. There! I said it! And that's including the homer pick Washington Wizards being in my NBA top three. Let me prove I'm right.

Sitting at number three on my G-League logo rank is the Maine Red Claws and their lobster logo  that looks like he's about to put a beating on some dude that owes him some serious money. Huge powerful claws draped either side of the Red Claws' wordmark are intimidating, especially when combined with that facial expression that says to me "you better not drop me in no boiling water or else." He also looks none too pleased by the cute little basketballs someone has glued on to his antennae or whatever they call those things on lobsters.

Unfortunately for this crustacean, he's red, which means he's already cooked (and yes still somehow alive). But we can suspend disbelief here a little right? The secondary logo's not quite as good but if it were the only logo rolled out by this team, I still think it would get a top 10 nod. Bravo, Maine. You finally found something for me to like about your state.

2. Memphis Hustle

If you know anything about my love of logos (or if you've ready past posts from me about NBA logos and haven't just dismissed the information like you probably should have), you'll know I think the Memphis Grizzlies' bear head logo is the best in the NBA hands down. Well, I got some news: the Grizz outdid themselves with their G-League branding because this stuff is even better than the original.

The look for the brand new Hustle team set to start play in a few months consists of three logos: a bear head silhouette with Memphis Hustle written in font eerily similar to the old 1970s pump triline font (pretty much anything from the 70s makes anything more awesome) complete with a finishing star on the "e"; a stylized "mh" using a similar font to the one in the bear head; and a circular "grit & grind" logo (again with the star). I love the colors here, I love the fonts and I love the callbacks to a bygone era when Memphis was cranking out some of the funkiest music around over at the old Stax Records studio. Thumbs way up all around. They might just be the best in the G-League if only...

1. Santa Cruz Warriors

Let's gloss over the alternate logos (and their variants) that make up the Santa Cruz Warriors' branding package just for a moment shall we? These things are good but not great. I'm even not upset about the "SC" logo and we know how I feel about jumbo initial logos by now. These secondary designs are not why the Dubs are number one in this countdown.

If there's a simple more elegant logo in professional basketball in the United States, I'm not aware of it. This thing is awesome. The Warriors have taken their own color scheme and circular motif and blown the doors off Santa Cruz with this baby, a trident in the shape of a capital W that simultaneously identifies the franchise and their coastal location. I also love the way it is not constrained by the circle but instead breaks through to stand on its own. This is an A+ design. If I lived in Santa Cruz, I'd have all sorts of swag with this look on it.

So that's it! 26 down, four to go (sort of). I'm expecting at this time next year we'll at least have a 27th team in the mix in the form of my very own Washington Wizards as yet unnamed G-League team so I'll need to spend a few days at least digesting how that look shakes up this countdown. In the meantime, that's all I have on this subject. Opening night at this point is just a bit more than two months away. Can't wait!

G-League Logo Rank, Part 2

Last week I published the first in a series of three posts ranking team logos of the 26 teams that make up the G-League or Gatorade League, the minor league farm system of the NBA, formerly known as the NBDL. I took on the eight worst (in my humble opinion) packages of logos adopted by the teams that make up that league. Here's part two, which also features eight not so good but certainly better than last week's logos. Once I'm done here, I'll conveniently have ten logos remaining for a triumphant top 10 in next week's post.

Enough gold plating something that has really no importance whatsoever but which strangely means something to me in the dead of summer when there's no NBA. Let's start in Grand Rapids.

18. Grand Rapids Drive

In part one of my G-League Logo Rank, I mentioned that I sketched the initial draft of this post series some months ago. In the first pass, the Grand Rapids Drive, which have pulled together a really pretty awesome looking primary logo with an absolutely abominable wholely unnecessary jumbo "GR" as their secondary look, were actually ranked much higher. So why the drop? Turns out it's because of what their parent club the Detroit Pistons went and did.

Let me explain. I love the old Detroit Pistons logo that the team used from 1979 to 1996. The complete loss of that logo in favor of (initially) a fire-breathing horse with tailpipes and a subsequent plain looking basketball with some strangely fonted arched wordmark over it was distressing to me. The only thing that came close to that classic look was the Drive's main logo. And I loved it (still do). But now the Pistons have adopted a logo that's closer in appearance to the 80s and early-90s one than the Drive's. Consequently the Drive's logo just ain't that great for me and the absolute horrorshow that is the giant "GR" becomes more dominant. I'm maybe being a bit unfair to the Furniture City (I'm serious with that name) but whatever. Get rid of the "GR" please.

17. Salt Lake City Stars

Does the Salt Lake City Stars logo seem unusually small to anyone or is it just me. Check out the full selection of primary G-League logos on Chris Creamer's sportslogos.net site and tell me it doesn't. Other than the Northern Arizona Suns (terrible name), the Stars' logo is way smaller than any other team's. I think that's the first thing that bothers me. It shouldn't because taken in isolation the Stars' logo is neither bigger nor smaller than anything. But it does all the same.

As a logo, the Stars look isn't all that bad. But it isn't all that good either. It's just a star with a basketball in front of it and another couple of stars on either end of the wordmark. Ironically (considering where this sort of thing got the Grand Rapids Drive and Texas Legends) the Stars might actually benefit from a secondary logo. Maybe something a little more exciting. Two thumbs sideways here.

16. Long Island Nets

Speaking of not all that bad, but not all that good either, let's take a look at the Long Island Nets. If there's a traditional logo that looks like it was borrowed from another decade and another sport, it's the Nets' look. This simple basketball with a script "Nets" written in front of it looks like it could be straight out of Major League Baseball in the 1970s. Not much more to say here. The Nets have crafted something innocuous enough not to be marked down for being bad but without much merit deserving of praise.

15. Erie Bayhawks

Last December I made it to my first Erie Bayhawks game. A couple of weeks later I found out the team had been sold to the Orlando Magic, which meant the complete death of yet another longstanding independent team before the one-to-one affiliations and outright ownership by NBA parent teams began to consume the league. For the Bayhawks, it meant that the 2016-2017 season would be their last. No more Bayhawks. No more complicated but independently proud Bayhawks logo.

Since my trip to Erie, the Bayhawks have moved to Lakeland, Florida and have become the Lakeland Magic. Yet the Bayhawks remain for one final season because the Atlanta Hawks' G-League franchise doesn't have a building to play in yet. So they agreed to stash the team in Erie under the old Bayhawks name. It's an odd circumstance that has nothing to do with ranking the team's logo, which is neither that good nor that bad. This is likely the Erie Bayhawks will be featured in any logo rank and I think that's sad.

14. Rio Grande Valley Vipers

The Vipers, just like the Bayhawks, are one of the holdovers from the pre-NBA team ownership era of the G-League (or the D-League actually), a team with a name not aligned with any NBA team's branding in a city somewhat far from the home club. Only their logos are better than those in Erie.

The primary logo is the best Vipers look here, a basketball (which oddly enough is one of the microfiber composite basketballs the NBA rolled out in 2006 and then kicked to the curb on January 1, 2007) with a viper, which are endemic to the Rio Grande Valley where Hidalgo (the Vipers' home town) is located, wrapped around it. It's well designed and proportioned and makes me believe that one of these things could wrap itself around a ball as a hands-off-this-is-mine gesture.

The secondary logos are less successful, mostly because the snake looks really stubby. There's not way a normal snake body is present between the head and tail in the alternate logos.

13. Sioux Falls Skyforce

The Skyforce are one of the G-League's oldest franchises, tracing their lineage all the way back to the old Continental Basketball Association in 1989 with no change in location or naming (although they flexed on the color) despite the fact that the Miami Heat moved into single affiliation status in 2013. They are one of the league's true survivors. For now.

There's not much to the Skyforce's logo. It's a simple basketball moving at rate of speed high enough to cause some sort of warped matter trail as it moves from left to right and down to up. It worked better with the team's old colors in my opinion (I've included the new scheme above and the original at the top of this post) but the Heat color scheme doesn't detract from the look that much. Simplicity (and my insistence on letting nostalgia for the good old days of the D-League and before) puts the Skyforce just inside the top half at 13.

12. Austin Spurs

I like the San Antonio Spurs logo. I like it so much that I've put it in the sixth position in my NBA logo rank each of the last three years. As much as I do like it though, I don't need to give that organization credit for just duplicating their look and foisting it on their minor league Austin-based franchise. It is as close to the original look as it could possibly be. The Spurs finish here because of just plan lack of originality.

11. Iowa Wolves

This offseason the Minnesota Timberwolves re-branded themselves completely. Well, maybe not completely because they still have the same nickname and their howling wolf logo looks suspiciously like previous howling wolf logos they have used. But they changed their color scheme a little, the wolf looks decidedly less rabid than he or she did in the past and their look now prominently features a four pointed north star in some sort of deep chartreuse color

Turns out the Timberwolves want the same look for their newly acquired G-League in Des Moines, the former Iowa Energy and now the Iowa Wolves. No howling in this one. Instead the wolf is looking straight at you and it doesn't look friendly. Not raving about the primary logo here; it's clearly a 2-for-1 special from the ad agency who redesigned the parent company's look. But I like the (again) map-based secondary logo if for no other reason than Iowa never seems to get a lot of pub as a state shown in isolation. I'm thinking the star is a bit too low for Des Moines, though.

16 down; 10 to go. I know all you G-League fans are already debating in your heads which of the remaining 10 franchises you'd put in which order. Eh, who's kidding whom. At least 90% of the people who will read this couldn't name five of the remaining 10 teams. If you are not motivated to look it up (and let's face it, who really is) stay tuned next week to this spot for the top 10.

G-League Logo Rank, Part 1

Now that I'm done with re-ranking the NBA logos for the third straight summer, let's tackle the minor league shall we?

I started writing this post months ago, knowing full well that I'd need to find something to kill the time this summer on this blog. I planned to make it a two-parter so that I wouldn't be tackling all 22 D-League (at the time) logos in one massive post. I figured I could reasonably tackle 11 each in two consecutive posts. I made a list from 1 to 22 and left it as a draft.

Since the time I started thinking about writing about the kids table league logos, there's been a lot of change. The Developmental League name is gone and replaced with corporate sponsored name Gatorade League. Gone too are the Los Angeles D-Fenders (reimagined as the South Bay Lakers) and the Iowa Energy (now the Iowa Wolves which is a tragedy of sorts). Of course the Lakers and Wolves (yawn! names) have revamped their logos but so have some other teams, and not all for the better. Finally, there are no longer 22 teams; there are 26. And all of a sudden two posts of 13 each doesn't sound so appealing to me.

So, with all that said, let's do this in three parts. And here's Part 1, which of course is the worst stuff in the G-League (I shudder every time I type that). Strap yourself in for some truly just not very good logos. It gets better. A couple of weeks from now when I roll out Part 3, your faith in logo designing will be restored because, in addition to some pretty terrible derivative logos, there are some gems in the G-League (shudder...that's the last time I'll write that out in this post).

26. Oklahoma City Blue

If you had challenged me to take the Oklahoma City Thunder's logo and make it worse, I'm not sure I could have done a better job than the team itself did when it rolled out its shot at branding their minor league team, the Blue (worst name in the league by the way). The parent team's logo, which features a triangle with bulging sides and some curved sort of markings behind, I believe is intended to reference the native Americans who called and call Oklahoma home. The overall effect, however, is underwhelming.

Two things about the Blue's logo (shown at the top of this post) here: (1) I'm not sure why anyone would want to copy the Thunder logo and (2) if you do actually like the logo, why make it simpler? Part of the problem with the Thunder logo to me is that it's too simple. Who knows, maybe I'm just looking for someone to add something to distract me from how bad this logo is. In the NBA, the Thunder are saved from the bottom spot because the Los Angeles Clippers rolled out a logo package a couple of years ago that is truly pathetic. There's nobody to save the Blue here.

25. Wisconsin Herd

A couple of years ago, the Milwaukee Bucks introduced a new branding that made their deer-centric logo package a little more abstract. Other than the fact that their primary logo looks like a deer head mounted on a wall, I generally love it as an improvement over their former look. It seems bold and modern and I love map based logos like the state of Wisconsin secondary logo. I don't love what the Bucks have done with that logo package as they have applied it to their minor league franchise.

First let me say that I like the alternate logo which is a stylized basketball with the letter W on it. But what is going on with the three-headed deer look? To me, this is either a deer with two smaller partial deer heads growing out of its shoulders or three deer about to do something very mean to the whomever they are staring at but the two deer in the back only have a single antler each. It looks like something out of a cheap deer-centric horror movie and represents the second logo of many in the G-League which are just manipulating the name and look of the parent franchise in a non-productive way.

24. Lakeland Magic

The Lakeland Magic have two official logos: one which is not sponsored and one which is. I don't like either of them but I especially don't like the sponsored one, which is the exact same as the non-sponsored one but with HomeValue.com at the bottom. I get that it's a way to make more money. I just don't get why anyone would want their branding to be this way.

As for the logo itself, I think the Magic got ripped off by someone putting a summer intern on their project. Seriously? A basketball surrounded by a black ring with some stars on it? I'm assuming this thing was a rush job and that they didn't pay much for it. I'd feel worse if they did. The Magic are the first team in this countdown who just named their G-League team after their NBA franchise. Predictably, I don't like this either; it's completely unimaginative. I know this list isn't about ranking team names but I had to mention that anyway.

23. Westchester Knicks

If the Westchester Knicks had just stuck to their guns here with their original logo when they entered the League, they'd finish a lot higher in this ranking. That's because their original logo was based on the old old New York Knicks logo that the home team (one of only two original franchises still in the location where they started) that featured Father Knickerbocker with a basketball.

To demonstrate how awesome their former logo was, I've included both the new and the old above. The current logo (on the left) is pretty much exactly the same as their parent team's logo except with "Westchester" in place of "New York". Boring. Yet, somehow in my mind better than the Blue, the mutated deer and a sponsored logo. Go figure. Supreme mediocrity somehow gets you 23rd out of 26 here. Who thinks James Dolan paid someone to come up with this logo? For the record, I do.

22. South Bay Lakers

Speaking of unimaginative retreads of an already-extant logo...let's talk about the South Bay Lakers (or the team formerly known as the Los Angeles D-Fenders). The Lakers haven't applied quite the same level of non-thought as the Knicks had, but it's pretty close.

The Los Angeles Lakers logo features a Lakers name apparently in fast motion forwards (or to the right on the logo) behind a gold basketball. The South Bay Lakers logo seems a bit more chill. Gone are the movement lines from the original perhaps because the junior Lakers and former D-Fenders have never won an NBDL (or whatever else you want to call it) title. But if the logo's come to a dead stop, the golden basketball has also transformed into a sun with an ocean below reflecting the sun's rays. How beach-y for a team that plays in El Segundo. The arena's not on the ocean but it's nor far off. The Lakers beat the Knicks here. Barely, but they do it. For the record, I like their secondary logo better.

21. Texas Legends

The logos that someone came up with for the Legends are not great but they show some imagination and that counts for something. I mean, look at the competition to this point for crying out loud. Let's take a look at their secondary logo first which is shown on the right above (the awkwardly fonted "TL" over a strangely patterned basketball graphic). I'll just say this sort of jumbo font logo isn't good and let's just move on. Some G-League teams haven't even bothered with an alternate look. The Legends shouldn't have either.

It's their primary branding that gets them some credit here. Yes, I know that the unevenly pointed star is a proportional nightmare; I assume it's intended to echo the star in the Lone Star State's flag. But honestly, I have to say before I started paying attention to the League's logos about six years ago (right before I made my first D-League road trip), I thought the logo was a cattle skull. So just for my mis-read which is I am sure the intended double entendre (or is it double voir?) the Legends get a win here. It's not elegant but it's effective.

20. Windy City Bulls

I know what you are thinking here. For the past three years (or for forever since I started publishing blog posts about logos over the last three summers) I've ranked the Chicago Bulls logo number one in the NBA. And the Windy City Bulls logo is pretty much the exact same thing, only with a kick ass map-based (which everyone knows I love) secondary logo to make the overall package even better. 

Well...yes and no. Pretty much the exact same thing and the actual exact same thing are different. And the WC Bulls' logo is beefier (pun intended) and less elegant than the original. The scowl is meaner, it's missing the red tipped horns from the original plus it's truncated. Don't get me wrong. The logo's not THAT bad and the secondary logo is awesome but the Bulls just get put down this logo because the whole primary logo just lacks any sort of originality whatsoever. Don't be derivative is the message for anyone trying to impress me with logos.

19. Greensboro Swarm

I love the Charlotte Hornets reintroduction into the NBA. I think the franchise's name is the best in the league; by and large I love their logo redesign over the old cartoon hornet from the original Charlotte Hornets franchise; and their honeycomb designed court is just terrific. I don't feel the same way about the Greensboro Swarm's copycat logos.

First of all, as I've already stated I hate all these logos that are just the initials of the team or city in large font therefore the "GS" logo just sucks to me. I feel the same way about the Legends' "TL" logo and I'll feel the same way about the Grand Rapids Drive's "GR" logo. They are simplistic and unoriginal.

But honestly, the primary Swarm logo isn't that great either. It's the same sort of hornet font that the big boys used to write the team's name and they have placed that name atop a hornet's butt. Not impressed. Two thumbs down.

So that's the bottom. There are 26 teams in the league so I've elected to do two eight team posts so I can have a top 10. Discuss what you hate about my opinions amongst yourselves (actually, nobody is going to do this and I know it). The next eight are up next week.

NBA Logo Rank 2017 Update

OK, so the regular season is over, the playoffs are done, we made it through the draft and free agency and Summer League. Now what do we do? Well if you are me, you spend your summer weeks writing about useless drivel like NBA team logos and mascots and names. Hey I gotta do something with my time between the end of Summer League and the announcement of the next season's schedule in early or mid-August. So let's go.

No mascot or team name rankings this summer because there have been no mascot or name changes in the NBA that I can see (although there have been in the D-League or I guess what is now the G-League). But there are plenty of logos to rank this summer. Let's start with the big boys and then let's tackle the G-League, shall we?

30. Los Angeles Clippers

Just like I said last year, unless the Clippers abandon their rebrand of two years ago or some other team rebrands with a worse package of logos (which quite honestly I can't imagine that anyone can do), they are going to be stuck in dead last for a while. Even Chris Paul got tired of wearing these logos and got himself traded to Houston. Still the worst look in basketball.

29. Oklahoma City Thunder

Still super boring and uncreative. Still saved from last by the Clippers.

28. Denver Nuggets

About a mile better (or maybe more accurately 4,000 feet higher) than OKC's drabness but still mired in the 28 spot. Sorry, Denver. Heed the call other teams have been hearing and go the throwback route. It's worked wonders for the Sixers, Warriors, Hawks (until they screwed it up by lack of self-restraint) and Wizards. It can work for you too. If done right.

27. Dallas Mavericks

Last year I wrote of the Mavs' 26 spot in this countdown that the only reason that they were that high was that the Piston screwed up so badly. This year, the Pistons (mostly) corrected their error. That drops the bland and unexciting Mavericks logos down to 27.

26. Cleveland Cavaliers

The Cleveland Cavaliers have added a new secondary logo to their family of logos. It's a shield. I thought knights used shields, not cavaliers. Cleveland drops a spot in this year's ranking not because of their shield necessarily but because in my opinion 25 other franchises have a better look.

25. Orlando Magic

For me, it's all about the font. The M and the A having one square corner drives me nuts. These two letters are symmetrical; they shouldn't have rounded corners on one side and a square on one the other. Plus the middle leg of the M not dropping all the way down like the outside ones do just sucks all my focus up when I look at this logo. Other than that, I don't think the Magic's logo is that bad.

24. Phoenix Suns

Every time I see the Phoenix Suns' streaking sun logo combined with the capital S I cringe. It looks like someone took an already not attractive font and just and threw it against a wall which caused a some how uniform and singularly unattractive shattered effect. Can't stand this one. It's pulling the Suns way down.

23. Houston Rockets

An R made out of rockets. Not exciting. Not exciting at all. Now that the Rockets are up for sale, maybe they'll get a new logo look, once the new owner realizes he or she has paid north of $2 billion for a basketball team, that is.

22. Brooklyn Nets

Once upon at time in Brooklyn, Jay-Z was a part owner. An owner of a super super super super small part of the team but an owner nonetheless. He allegedly had something to do with the design of the team's image when the Nets up and moved to Brooklyn. Now he's no longer an owner. There's no need to keep most of this branding around either. Not sure what the solution here necessarily is because I don't love any of the Nets' historical logos (except maybe the Jetsons-like ball on shield in hoop logo from the last Jersey days) but something needs to change.

21. Atlanta Hawks

The Hawks are the first of many teams in my ranking who have recently looked to the past for inspiration for stuff to put on their swag. Bringing back the Pac-Man logo was great. Then they added a whole series of weird secondary logos in mostly neon yellow. Head scratcher. Hawks at 21 this year.

20. Los Angeles Lakers

By all rights, the Lakers should be one of the lowest ranked teams on this list. I mean their logo is not really that creative and it looks a little dated (I know, some would say classic; I say dated). But to the Lakers' credit, they have not gone and gummed up the works by inventing a bunch of really awful secondary logos. Their awful primary logo gets them just inside the top 2/3 of the league.

19. Sacramento Kings

As much as I love the idea of ditching the old Kings' crossed lances logo, the dusting off of the old Kansas City Kings' look is not aging well. And it's only been a year. I think it's the clumsy font and the very very simplistic crown. I have a feeling this isn't going to survive the test of time.

18. Minnesota Timberwolves

The Timberwolves are the only team to undergo a complete branding transformation this offseason. No more giant wolf head staring out over a line of coniferous trees. This new package of logos is a bit of an upgrade for me.

Like many teams over the last five years or so, the Wolves have gone with a circular logo as their primary look. Their main logo isn't that much different from the one used over the past 10 years or so: it's basically a mirror image with the white and the trees gone and the North Star added in the basketball patterned sky. It's cleaner and darker. The wolf in this version is howling beneath a starry sky and not the unseen moon of the pre-2017 look.

The strength for me in this new look is the North Star and the simplicity. The alternate logos follow this theme, with a simple basketball-and-star as their best secondary logo (at the top of this post). Minnesota kept it simple here. And it works for me.

17. Toronto Raptors

Here's my annual plea for the Toronto franchise to change its name permanently to the Huskies, who played just one year in the BAA, which was the forerunner of the current league. The Raps have celebrated that old name with a throwback night or two recently and there's a website advocating the exact same thing I pull for every summer. Until the team decides to do that, they continue to get credit for eliminating the Barney logo a couple of years ago. They sit at 17 this year, dropping two spots due to the Pacers and Pistons trying something different.

16. Indiana Pacers

Earlier this year, Larry Bird delivered the Pacers' bid for the 2021 (!!) NBA All-Star Game to the NBA's offices in New York City. Bird delivered the envelope to HQ that day in an Indy Car, complete with NYPD motorcade, featuring what appeared to be a new secondary Pacers logo (shown above).  I love this thing. It's geography based (I LOVE maps!) and features a star right where Indianapolis is, making it place specific to the city that hosts the team with the state's name. High praise for the Pacers from me for this simple but super effective secondary logo.

But here's the problem: I'm just not sure if it IS a secondary logo or if it's just an All-Star logo in the event the city wins the '21 game. I can't find it on the Pacers' website as a logo at all that will be used in circulation. For the purposes of this post, knowing the answer here is huge and there's no definitive direction, here's what I'm going to do: I'm going to guess and give the Pacers partial credit. I'm moving them ahead of the Raptors this year. If it's not official this time next summer, they are at risk of moving backwards. 

15. Milwaukee Bucks

Still can't get the image of a deer mounted on a wall as a hunting trophy out of my mind. As much as I like the Bucks' rebranding as an upgrade over their prior look, that still bugs me. Also the font is just terrible. If it turns out the Pacers' new secondary logo is legit, I'm moving them ahead of the Bucks next year.

14. New Orleans Pelicans

Logos! Logos! Logos! The Pels still lead the league in number and variety of logos. And most of them are pretty good. Except the one that they use the most. While that one is totally New Orleans, it's still too dated for my taste.

13. Philadelphia 76ers

With the exception of the Charlotte Hornets at 9, the Memphis Grizzlies at 4 and to some extent the Washington Wizards at 3, the top 13 spots in my ranking are occupied by teams that have either (a) found something a long time ago that worked and are sticking with it or (b) have figured out what they had a while ago worked really well and have brought the old logos back. The Sixers resurrected their old look (mostly) but are the sitting a the 13 spot because they couldn't leave well enough alone and invented a Ben Franklin dribbling a basketball logo which just doesn't work for me.

12. Detroit Pistons

Last year the Pistons were 27th in my ranking. This year they are 12th. Something big happened here. And what happened was the Pistons looked to their competition for inspiration.

In 1979, the Detroit Pistons unveiled what I consider to be their classic logo, a stylized red basketball inside a blue circle with the words "Detroit Pistons" in simple block letters in the center of the ball. It was a variant of a logo that went all the way back to their move to the motor city. It was simple, it was clean, it was effective. 

Then in 1996 they decided that awesome look wasn't good enough so they switched their logo to some kind of flaming horse with tailpipes and accented the whole thing in some sort of dark aqua. They also switched their font to some sort of thing that has some letters with pointed ends now and then. Terrible stuff. Unbelievably, it lasted nine seasons before they switched it back to a red, white and blue basketball logo, albeit with the terrible font intact. That basketball though was rotated from the old logo and the words were curved.

So now things have come full circle and the Pistons are back close to the 1979-1996 look. Mostly. The font is still a bit different and there's silver border around the whole thing. I'll take it. I actually like the silver lining and the font's not that objectionable when the letters are small.

In case you are wondering why the Pistons (and all these other teams that are adopting something close to their past branding) don't just go back to what they had, they can't. All the retired logos belong to the NBA's Hardwood Classics brand and they don't let teams reappropriate them once they give them up the first time. That's why the Pistons, Hawks and Sixers all have logos that are 95-99% (but not 100%) identical to past logos.

11. Utah Jazz

Speaking of awesome reinventions of the past, I love the Jazz logos. I just don't love them at all in Utah. Please find another name for this team.

10. Portland Trail Blazers

The Blazers have one of the most unusual logos in professional sports. It's an abstract representation of a five on five basketball game that could only have been cooked up in the late 1960s or early 1970s. And I love it. The Blazers have tweaked the original version a couple of times and they have done it again this offseason. Gone are the tapered ends to the swirl lines (I just made that term up) which is an upgrade for me. Also gone is the lines dying into the other side of the swirl. Not sure that change works better or worse for me. Still one of my favorite logos out there. Just got good enough to move them inside number 10 this year.

9. Charlotte Hornets

8. Miami Heat

7. Golden State Warriors

6. San Antonio Spurs

5. New York Knicks

4. Memphis Grizzlies

3. Washington Wizards

2. Boston Celtics

1. Chicago Bulls

So the top nine in my ranking last year did something smart: they didn't change a thing, although the Knicks did roll out a 70th anniversary logo that is super sharp. And that means that this year's top nine is the same as last year's. I still think the Hornets and Dubs have too many choices in their logos but honestly the secondary logos are in many ways better than their primaries. I still hate the fact that the Heat are in the top nine and my growing distaste for the Celtics had me for a minute considering sliding my beloved Wiz ahead of them before realizing I have absolutely no good reason for doing so.

The Bulls are still number one. If there's message about the value in never changing, it's the Bulls consistently being in the top spot. 52 years, one logo. 'Nuff said.

G-League logos up next. What a mess that collection is!